Chapter 5 - The Aftermath in the Nursery
The nursery was dead quiet except for the ragged, rattling breaths of six-month-old Leo.
Vivienne knelt on the nursery floor, cradling the baby against her chest. Her silk robe was stained with a mixture of formula and the thin, pale froth of the infant's failing respiration. Without a second wasted, she popped the cap off the sterile syringe she had been holding and plunged the needle directly into the muscle of Leo’s thigh.
"Epinephrine," Vivienne muttered, her voice entirely stripped of emotion, operating on pure clinical instinct. "Breathe, Leo. Come on, sweetheart. Breathe."
Dante stood rooted to the spot, his pistol still half-drawn, his chest heaving as his brain struggled to catch up with the violence of the last thirty seconds.
Ten seconds earlier, he had believed his fiancée was a traitor.
Ten seconds earlier, he had been prepared to kill her.
Now, the woman everyone in his house feared was holding open the fragile doorway through which life was returning to his nephew.
Slowly, agonizingly, the blue shadow around Leo’s lips began to recede. His chest rose with a sharp, shuddering hitch.
A thin, angry cry escaped the baby’s lungs—the most beautiful sound Dante Moretti had ever heard in his entire life.
The sound brought the mafia boss crashing down to his knees on the hardwood floor.
Dante reached out, his massive hands trembling as they hovered over the baby. Vivienne carefully shifted Leo into Dante’s arms, her gray eyes meeting his with an unreadable depth.
"He’s going to live," Vivienne said quietly, wiping a stray drop of sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "The dose hasn't reached saturation yet. But we need to get him to Ashbury Medical Center immediately to flush his stomach."
Dante looked down at his nephew, then up at Vivienne. The cold armor he had worn for a decade cracked and fell away, leaving behind raw, exposed shock.
"Clara said... she said the Cross family was going to burn me down," Dante rasped, his voice thick with disbelief. "She was working for your father?"
"My father is a ruthless bastard, Dante," Vivienne said, standing up and smoothing down her stained robe. "He uses freight routes and politicians. He doesn't use poison and poisoned maids." She looked toward the open balcony doors, where the fog was slowly clearing. "Clara wasn't working for the Northern Corridor Alliance. She was working for the people who want both of our families destroyed."
Before Dante could ask what she meant, Sal Mercer burst into the nursery, panting heavily, holding a thick manila folder in his fist.
"Boss! I checked the dispensary! Potassium chloride is missing, and—sweet mother of God, what happened out on the terrace?" Sal stopped dead, staring at Clara’s crumpled body visible over the balcony rail, then at Vivienne, who stood calmly beside the overturned rocking chair.
"Call an ambulance for Leo," Dante ordered, his voice finally regaining its iron command. He stood up, holding his nephew securely against his chest. He looked at Vivienne, realizing for the first time how close he had come to executing the only person in the estate who had been trying to protect his blood.
"Vivienne," Dante started, but she held up a hand, silencing him.
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"Don't," she said, her gray eyes flashing with a cold, dangerous fire. "You pointed a gun at my head based on the word of a maid you've known for two years, while ignoring the evidence staring you in the face." She picked up her leather medical case from the floor, unzipping it to check her instruments. "If you want to keep that boy alive, Mr. Moretti, you're going to need a much better security detail. And a much better judge of character."
She turned and walked out of the nursery, her heels clicking steadily against the hallway floor, leaving Dante standing alone in the wrecked room with his breathing nephew in his arms.
